Rachel Horner Brackett

Associate Professor of Anthropology

• Phone: 309-794-7676
• Email: rachelbrackett@augustana.edu
• Office: Evald 108

Rachel Horner Brackett is an enthusiastic anthropologist who brings her passion for the subject into the classroom. Growing up on a family farm in a small town in Illinois, Dr. Horner Brackett had never even heard of anthropology until she accidentally signed up for an intro course during her first year of college. The rest, as they say, is history.

Dr. Horner Brackett received broad training across the four subfields of American anthropology: archaeology, bioanthropology, linguistic anthropology, and socio-cultural anthropology. She conducted PhD research in Tuscany, where she lived and worked on an agritourism estate in order to study the connections between food traditions, sustainability and heritage management. In 2015, she returned to Italy to study Etruscan archaeology through a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship. Dr. Horner Brackett also holds a Master's Degree in Public Health, with a focus on Community and Behavioral Health. At Augustana, she teaches courses on medical anthropology, food studies, anthropological theory, the prehistoric human record, public health, and more. Her current research projects examine 1) the impact of climate change on Italian agritourism, and 2) the threat of African Swine Fever in heritage-breed hog operations in Italy.

When she’s not teaching, reading, or planning her next trip abroad, Dr. HB enjoys organic gardening, keeping 100+ houseplants alive, spending time with the Horner Brackett family menagerie (two cats, two dogs and two parrots), and dabbling in fiber arts.